 Welcome to the Endnotes, where I put all the fun facts I can't fit into the main videos. Today, some extra bits of information for my video about the future tense, and if you haven't seen that yet, click on the card. As I said in the main video, while King Alfred translated Augustine's soliloquies, he never translated the Confessions, which is a shame, as it would have given more insight into how old English speakers might have thought about Augustine's breakdown of time. But Alfred is involved in this story in another way. He seems to be the first clear recorded instance of a European using the candle clock, which measures time by burning a candle with time measurements marked on it. The Chinese were known to use the candle clock in the 6th century, predating King Alfred, but these were likely two independent inventions. The advantages of the candle clock are that it doesn't rely on the sun, as in the sundial, which had been used ever since around 1500 BC by the Egyptians and Babylonians, and it is simpler and requires less maintenance than the water clock, which uses the slow dripping of water to measure time. Again, the Babylonians and Egyptians seemed to be the first to use water clocks, as far back as the 16th century BC, but it was also used in the ancient world in China, India, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The Greeks called the water clock a klepsydra, literally water thief. So in many ways, we have the Babylonians to thank for kicking off the whole timekeeping endeavor. Another element we have to thank the Babylonians for is the division of the day into 12 light hours, probably to reflect the 12th part zodiac, and also because the Babylonians used a sexagesimal counting system, base 60 instead of our base 10 decimal system, hence also 60 minutes and 60 seconds. But the real obsession with time began in the Christian monasteries of Europe, and it's all because of their praying schedule. In order to hold the necessary services at the appointed times, matins at sunrise, sexed at midday, known in mid-afternoon, vespers at the end of the workday, and complying in the evening, they needed to keep track of time, but there were some problems. Sundials wouldn't work at night or on cloudy days, the water in the water clocks would tend to freeze in the northern monasteries in the colder months, and candles were expensive. Often they just appointed one monk the job of tracking natural cues, like the cock crowing at morning, but that meant he had to stay awake at night, leading to what is now a children's song, Frère Jacques. Brother John, wake up, sound the matins, ding-dang-dong! So the church were all in favour of developing better clocks for timekeeping. Now let's pause for a moment to consider the word clock itself. It's related to French cloche, meaning bell, from Latin cloca, which may have come from a Celtic word, so originally a clock was just that, a bell. In the monasteries, when it was the appointed time for prayer, someone would ring a bell to call the monks to the service. Only later, when the bell was attached to a mechanical timekeeping device, was the word clock transferred over to the timepiece itself. We don't know who first invented the mechanical clock, but they started to appear in medieval Europe in the 14th century. Initially these clocks, often contained in towers, didn't have clock faces, they just rang bells on the hour. The dial, when it was added to the clock towers, was developed from the old sundials, circular and moving in a clockwise direction, because that's the direction the shadow moves on the sundial, at least in the northern hemisphere. The word dial, by the way, comes from Latin dialis, daily, from D.A.'s day. These early mechanical clock dials had only one hand to indicate hours. They weren't accurate enough yet to measure anything smaller. But over time, technological improvements were made to these early gravity-driven clocks, like Christian Heuchen's invention of the pendulum-driven clock, Robert Hook's improvements to spring-driven clocks, and Daniel Quar's addition of the concentric minute hand, and thus, as clocks became more accurate, additional division became possible. Minute is related to minute, from Latin minutus small, and was used in the Latin phrase, pars minuta prima, first small part, or in other words, the first division of the hour into 60. Second in turn comes from the phrase pars minuta secunda, second small part, so the second division into a smaller part, Latin secundus meaning not only second, but also following, from the verb secui, to follow. Not only these hour to etymologize, it can be traced back to Greek hora, which rather vaguely referred to a period of time or season, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning year or season, through the Germanic branch also giving us English year. Greek hora also gives us the words horology, the science of time, French au loge meaning clock, and horoscope, literally period of time watcher, which brings us back to the notions of prediction and the future. And what's more, the metaphor of the clock was, particularly during the Enlightenment, used to conceptualize one idea about the universe, the clockwork universe, set in motion by God, the cosmic clockmaker, and following the laws of motion that Isaac Newton discovered, a deterministic universe that was completely predictable. As always, you can hear even more etymology and history, as well as interviews with a wide range of fascinating people on the Endless Knot podcast, available on all major podcast platforms, as well as our other YouTube channel. Thanks for watching!